Distant Star

Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star is a novel I'd been looking for for some time. It's an expansion of a short chapter at the end of Bolaño's earlier Nazi Literature in the Americas, although the name of the pilot changes between the two stories (for the worse in my opinion).

Like quite a bit of Bolaño's work, Distant Star focuses on poets and poetry. Our narrator is someone like Bolaño, a Chilean exile who has bounced around over the years. (As mentioned by Bolaño in an author's note, this is most likely Bolaño's alter ego, Arturo Belano). Narrator first encounters the poet/pilot in a poetry workshop, which he (Carlos Wieder, the pilot) had been attending under an assumed name.

I've seen Distant Star called a companion piece to Bolaño's By Night in Chile, in other reviews, as they both deal with the post-coup literary scene. Of course, while this is true, they're quite different works. The paranoia and irrationality of O'Ryan (whose obsession with Wieder drives much of the novel) pales before that of our priest in the latter novel. (Not to mention that the pacing is significantly different. A deathbed rant as opposed to a fugue.)

Recommended, as with all of Bolaño's work that I've come across. (Although I'd prefer the chapter in Nazi Literature in the Americas, to this.)

Miscellania

Read while my access to the blog was limited:

Luigi Pirandello's Short Stories Link
Roberto Bolaño's The Return and The Insufferable Gaucho Link and link
Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time Link
Daniel Okrent's The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Link
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground Link

Pirandello is a noted short story master, and here's only a small selection. I found these a bit uneven -- there's four sections: "Sicilian Tales", "Tales of Humor and Irony", "Tales of Frustration", and "Tales of Anguish and Hope". I found the first two sections had the stories that were most to my liking (particularly "Sicilian Tales), and the latter two were pretty poor, in my opinion. "The Umbrella" is a particularly bad offender here. Many of the latter stories were very cloying.

Bolaño's two short story collections here are both excellent; The Return is a bit more conventional, while The Insufferable Gaucho features several slightly longer pieces. Standout works in The Return include "Joanna Silvestri" about a South American porn star spending time with John Holmes before his death, "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura", about tracking down a forgotten porn actor, and "The Return", which although is not about pornography, is about necrophilia. The Insufferable Gaucho has "Police Rat" which seems to take place in one of Kafka's universes, and "Alvaro Rousselot's Journey", about an author confronting a foreign filmmaker who adapts his works without credit. This isn't too different from the other works of Bolaño's that I have read, and that's not a bad thing.

Part of Our Time is a book I had had to buy for a class some years ago. It was out of print, but I was able to easily find it on Amazon. It's back in print these days, which is a fantastic thing -- this is an even-handed, non-hysterical look at what drew several men (and women) to unions, to socialism, to communism. Published in 1955 (!!!) it's a fascinating look back at the conditions of the thirties, and how these workingmen responded to them. Kempton covers some familiar names (Alger Hiss, Paul Robeson), and some unfamiliar ones (Joe Curran, J.B. Matthews). This is an extremely frank and thoughtful work, which has made me want to seek out other pieces of Kempton's, as well as wonder about the Red Scare in general -- I was under the impression that work of this tenor wasn't done on anything remotely Left during that time period.

Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition is, like the previous, a fascinating look at a period of history I had been unfamiliar with. It's a little less academic than Kempton's work, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, unlike Kempton, who breaks up each narrative into a separate chapter, Okrent moves chronologically, which is probably the most logical way to cover the period, but can lead to leaping back and forth. Still, it's a great look at a period in American history that I've often seen skipped over. One memorable moment is a quote from Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas: "There's as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming bird to fly to Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."

Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is very short, but not quite an easy read. Unfortunately, as the translator's foreword notes, the only text we have had been significantly edited in order to be initially published, and Dostoevsky chose to keep the edits in subsequent printings. An introspective rant, written as a polemic against mid-nineteenth century Russian intellectuals, this is significantly less intimidating than some of Dostoevsky's longer novels, and has inspired me to pick one of them up soon.

By Night in Chile

Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile is a critical look at the behavior of the country's intelligentsia during the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. The novel is a dramatic deathbed confession by a priest and literary critic, Father Urrutia, who had turned a blind eye to the misdeeds, assassinations, and censorship of the regime, and is now filled with regret, and a desire that he not be misunderstood, that his story be told. He depicts himself as pursued by "the wizened youth", who, it becomes clear as the novel progresses, is a younger Urrutia, who has not yet debased himself.

Although the coup is mentioned (and our priest is an instructor to Pinochet himself!), the novel's most powerful political passage is in metaphor -- Urrutia is sent to Europe, ostensibly on church business, by government agents. He is to write a report on the preservation of churches, as the churches in Europe are much older than the churches in Chile, so there's been significantly more research on the Old Continent. After his arrival, the priest is surprised to find that "the principal threat to the major examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture was pollution caused not by humans but by animals, specifically pigeon shit," and the priests have all taken up falconry as a solution. The passages that follow, describing how two falcons cannot coexist in one city, or how a falcon takes a dove that had been released to celebrate a festival, are clear metaphors for fascism.

The complicity of the intellectuals in the coup is made explicit towards the end of the novel, as our priest relates how a certain woman was able to give parties for writers and artists despite the curfew imposed by the regime. He speaks of how she wasn't exactly in the community due to her efforts, but due to her willingness to host the gatherings. Eventually, it is discovered that her husband is not a traveling salesman, but is a high level functionary in the secret police, and is torturing suspects in the house, sometimes even while the parties are going on. Again, in a metaphor, the poet who finds this out does not raise the alarm, but quietly slinks back to the party and rejoins his fellows.

Unlike this post, By Night in Chile lacks paragraph breaks, or regular sentences -- Bolaño has captured the spirit of a rant, as Urrutia digresses, hallucinates, catches himself, and plunges onward, pausing only to wheeze and draw breath, before the storm of shit begins.